Oscar-nominated movie The Sessions made many people think differently about disability - but perhaps none more so than its disabled director, Ben Lewin.

''If I was afraid of the 'disease of the week' genre, I hope I'm not any more,'' Lewin says with a chuckle.

By the time I reached adulthood, I felt I had risen above my own disability and did not want to look back.

The former barrister from Melbourne says he had long distanced himself from anything to do with the disabled, despite spending the past 60 years on crutches as a result of contracting polio at age six.

Ben Lewin's film The Sessions has made him a 'reluctant activist' for the disabled. Photo: Simon O'Dwyer

''For the most part, I conspicuously avoided them and their issues,'' he said on Tuesday in a speech to disability services provider Yooralla. ''By the time I reached adulthood, I felt I had risen above my own disability and did not want to look back. I was on a roll as a normal person, or close enough to normal.''

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The Sessions changed all that, turning him into a ''reluctant activist'' as critics acclaimed him and people with disabilities claimed him.

Released in November, the movie earned Helen Hunt an Academy Award nomination for her performance as a sex surrogate hired by a 38-year-old quadriplegic (John Hawkes) who wants to lose his virginity. Made for less than $1 million, most of it raised from old friends of Lewin and his wife Judy Levine, in Melbourne, the film has taken more than $9 million globally.

''We can now interface with actors and other high-level people in the industry as equals,'' says Lewin, who moved to Los Angeles on the back of his third Australian feature, Lucky Break, in 1994. But, despite a couple of early TV directing gigs, his own lucky break was elusive.

Lewin spent much of the decade before he made The Sessions raising the couple's youngest child while his wife went to work. On the side he did a little dealing in high-end watches, a hobby-cum-career that grew out of research for his 1991 film The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish.

Though the lean years were frustrating professionally, being a house husband was ''therapeutic'', he says. ''I spent a lot of time being a parent, which I hadn't with my other kids, so I don't think of those years as lost.''

At 66, his Hollywood career finally has traction again. ''I work with actors and what they can do as opposed to special effects and what computers can do. It's been, what do I say, uplifting.''

His next project is likely to be a remake of a Korean movie titled A Moment to Remember, about a 29-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease - Katherine Heigl is lined up to star. He has also optioned the book Hot Cripple, in which author Hogan Gorman recounts her battles with the US healthcare system after being struck by a car.

There's a biopic on Eleanor Roosevelt he's keen on. ''It's about how she really invented the role of the first lady,'' he says. ''It's also very confronting and frank about her lesbian love life.''

Lewin knows it's impossible to say which, if any, of the projects will bear fruit.

''This is Hollywood - you cross your fingers and say a prayer,'' he says. But this time he won't be the only one hoping his next lucky break isn't 18 years in the making.